Outskirts Press, INC.

LIVING WITHOUT SHADOWS

THE Madam is reaching out to press the bell next to her bed.
She doesn’t know who will answer the bell, or if it will be answered at all.
If the bell is answered she will know it is not a Thursday.
If the bell is not answered she will know it is probably Thursday.
But she won’t know what she and her family will eat that night, or whether she will spend another week looking for a new maid.
If the bell is not answered, perhaps she has failed, again.
In that moment, that moment of anticipation as the Madam reaches out for the bell, a cusp is formed at the junction of her present and her past.
‘Living without Shadows’ is the record of that moment.
The moment between the boy and the worker in the trench.
The knife at the throat of the brother.
The waiting at the bottom of the kitchen stairs.
The moment of the revolution.
The moment before she screams.
The moment before unconsciousness.
The moment before death.
Before the button engages.
Before the circuit is complete, the lives of The Madam, her husband, her children and the servants are revealed. Her immigrant family passes from the pogroms of early twentieth century Eastern Europe to Apartheid South Africa.
The intimate moments of the Madams innocent desires and hopes are laid bare in the bathtub.
The perversions of morality, compromise and the victimization of one by the other fester as the family endures the dilemmas and poses of personal success and failure in the face of Fascism and Zionism, depression, misogyny and megalomania. Each reaches to find the equation that will balance betrayal and delusion with the quest for respite, reconciliation and acceptance.